Famous Reviews eBook

of the Cockney poets. As for Mr. Keats’s
“Endymion,” it has just as much to do with
Greece as it has with “old Tartary the fierce”;
no man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallest
knowledge or feeling of classical poetry or classical
history, could have stooped to profane and vulgarise
every association in the manner which has been adopted
by this “son of promise.” Before
giving any extracts, we must inform our readers, that
this romance is meant to be written in English heroic
rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt’s
poems, this hint might indeed be needless. Mr.
Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless versification,
and Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in fairness
to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of
the system are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciples’
work than in his own. Mr. Hunt is a small poet,
but he is a clever man. Mr. Keats is a still
smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities,
which he has done every thing in his power to spoil....

After all this, however, the “modesty,”
as Mr. Keats expresses it, of the Lady Diana prevented
her from owning in Olympus her passion for Endymion.
Venus, as the most knowing in such matters, is the
first to discover the change that has taken place
in the temperament of the goddess. “An
idle tale,” says the laughter-loving dame,

A humid eye, and steps luxurious,
When these are new and strange, are ominous.

The inamorata, to vary the intrigue, carries on a
romantic intercourse with Endymion, under the disguise
of an Indian damsel. At last, however, her scruples,
for some reason or other, are all overcome, and the
Queen of Heaven owns her attachment.

She gave her fair hands to him, and behold,
Before three swiftest kisses he had told,
They vanish far away!—­Peona
went
Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.

And so, like many other romances, terminates the “Poetic
Romance” of Johnny Keats, in a patched-up wedding.

We had almost forgotten to mention, that Keats belongs
to the Cockney School of Politics, as well as the
Cockney School of Poetry.

It is fit that he who holds Rimini to be the first
poem, should believe the Examiner to be the first
politician of the day. We admire consistency,
even in folly. Hear how their bantling has already
learned to lisp sedition.

There are who lord it o’er their
fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who
unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
From human pastures; or, O torturing fact!
Who, through an idiot blink, will see
unpack’d
Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe
Our gold and ripe-ear’d hopes.
With not one tinge
Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight
Able to face an owl’s, they still
are dight
By the blue-eyed nations in empurpled
vests,
And crowns, and turbans. With unladen